The Black Knave Read Online Free Page A

the man,” she said desperately, already forming her plan. She could not give up too easily.
    “You do not have to know anything, other than he’s loyal to the rightful crown and your king wishes it.”
    She had no other protests. She’d already voiced them all.
    Cumberland apparently took her silence for surrender. “We leave for Braemoor within the hour.”
    “No.” The word escaped her before she could take it back. She tried to modify it. “I must get my brother ready.”
    “Your brother will not be going. He will stay here, and Lord Creighton will convey your farewells.”
    She could only stare at him. “I must see him,” she said after a moment’s pause.
    “He has already been taken to another room. You will gather what you wish to take, and be ready to travel in thirty minutes.”
    “Please….” It was the hardest word she’d ever spoken. She’d sworn never to beg to her captors, but dear God, Dougal. How could she leave him alone after all he’d lost? How could she, too, disappear? The lord of this manor, the Earl of Creighton, was an Englishman. She’d been treated with the barest of courtesy, relegated to the meanest bedchamber. That did not matter to her, not after all her major losses, but it said a great deal about what her brother could expect. Especially if he was held hostage to her marriage.
    Marriage . Her heart froze. Marriage to a traitor. To a weak man who would accept a wife in exchange for money.
    But she did not matter. Her brother did.
    She looked at Cumberland. “How will I know that my brother will be safe?”
    “My word,” he said.
    His word meant nothing to her. She was only too aware of his butchery since Culloden. He’d hunted down every surviving Jacobite, including women and children. Whole families had been burned alive. She bent her head so he wouldn’t see her hatred.
    “You will be ready, then?”
    “Aye,” she said in a barely audible voice.

Chapter 2
    Bethia despised herself for being so afraid. Yet tremors ran up and down her backbone as she—and her guards— approached Braemoor.
    She had long ago understood that she was naught but an object to be sold at will. A woman in Scotland had little power unless her father or brother gave it to her, and she knew she’d been fortunate that her father had given her the choice to reject various suitors. He had loved her dearly; she’d always known that. He’d wanted her to make a love match. But when naught happened, he’d pressed her for a decision, putting forth one man, then another. As his impatience increased, she’d approved her brother’s choice of Angus, a man she could respect.
    Now her father was dead, as were her two brothers and Angus, and to protect the last of the male line she would have to heed the English king’s command. God’s teeth, but that fact galled her. The man who rode beside her, a stern-faced captain who had been assigned by Cumberland to accompany her, galled her as well. But the man who was to be her husband galled her most of all.
    How could she, in all conscience, make vows with a Protestant? With an infidel? With the man who might well have killed one or more of her brothers? A cold chill permeated her.
    The stark structure ahead did not allay her fears. A tower house rather than a sprawling castle, it rose vertically up toward the sky. She saw three towers but few windows, and it had none of the elaborate corbelled turreting of some tower houses. It looked cold and unwelcoming.
    And how soon would she have to lie with the present lord in one of its chambers? She now knew a little more about him. She had listened to Cumberland’s officers when they thought her asleep. The marquis was a misfit. A drunkard and gambler and womanizer. They even suspected that he’d slipped from the battlefield, and mayhap even injured himself to keep himself safe from the enemy.
    That was the man they were commanding her to marry.
    If it were not for her brother …
    But she was a woman. Nothing